Teera takes a seat next to Narunn on the straw mat, where his knee presses against hers as if to offer support, and prepares herself for another heartbreak and, by the same token, another healing, knowing that in the words to come, she will hear her father’s voice, his song.
The spirit of this land lives in its fields of rice,
Its forest pathways, its flooded rivers,
And in the rhythms that echo
For the sojourners, already on our way . . .
Author’s Note
While the principal characters in this novel are fictional, the story is set amidst historical events in Cambodia before, during, and after the Khmer Rouge regime. These include the US bombing campaign; the Khmer Rouge victory and mass evacuation of the urban population in 1975; targeted killings of the educated elite, former soldiers, scholars, monks, and artists; and the eventual waves of purges that saw hundreds of thousands imprisoned and executed. Slak Daek is a fictional prison, but the methods of torture described there are those employed by the Khmer Rouge in a network of nearly two hundred “security centers” established across the country, including at Tuol Sleng, the most thoroughly documented of these.
A Khmer Rouge survivor myself, I escaped as a child across the border to Thailand after the fall of the regime with only my mother left from among the vast extended family who’d made up my world before the war. My father was taken away in the early days of the revolution, and his disappearance, his uncertain death, has haunted me ever since. Even as a child, I was struck by the contradiction that, like many other Khmer intellectuals of that era, my father was sympathetic to the ideals of democracy that the revolutionary movement espoused, and yet became an early victim.
Today it is common to find perpetrators and victims living side by side, and even for those of us who lived through the atrocity, it is often difficult to discern a dividing line between the two. While some joined the revolutionary movement by idealistic inclination, many more were coerced or forced to take on roles as soldiers, guards, informants, and spies. Few can look back honestly without confronting questions of conscience as to what they might have done differently.
If my first novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, is a story of survival, Music of the Ghosts is a story of survivors. The novel opens in the period before the convening of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, a long-overdue but highly restricted undertaking focused on just a handful of surviving former leaders. My motivation in writing is to explore the questions of responsibility, atonement, forgiveness, and justice in the more everyday settings in which survivors find themselves—in the chambers of the heart, and in the intimate encounters where perpetrator and victim sit face-to-face.
V.R.
Historical Chronology
1953
Cambodia wins independence from French rule. Saloth Sar (later Pol Pot) and colleagues return from studies in France.
1954
Geneva Conference delivers political and military settlement, leading to withdrawal of French and Vietnamese troops.
1963
Preap In, an insurgent in the Khmer Serei nationalist movement, is executed. Pol Pot is named party secretary and leader of the underground Communist Party.
1967
Jacqueline Kennedy visits Phnom Penh.
1968
Khmer Rouge launch armed insurgency.
1969
After four years of bombing raids on Cambodian territory, US forces launch the intensified secret bombing campaign known as Operation Menu, which continues until 1973.
1970
Prince Sihanouk is deposed in a military coup led by his first cousin Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak and his former commander in chief and defense minister, Lon Nol.
1973
Khmer Rouge advance in civil war against US-backed Lon Nol government, gaining control over most of the country’s territory. US forces bomb Neak Leung.
1975
Khmer Rouge seize Phnom Penh and take power, launching a mass evacuation of the city. In the subsequent years, hundreds of thousands are tortured and executed, many in a network of secret security prisons. An estimated 1.7 million perish from violence, disease, starvation, and forced labor.
1978
Vietnamese forces invade in December.
1979
Vietnamese forces take control of Phnom Penh in January, sending remnant Khmer Rouge forces into retreat.
1989
Vietnamese forces withdraw from Cambodia.
1991
Paris peace accords are signed, setting the stage for a United Nations–led transitional authority and elections in 1993.
1997
UN Commission on Human Rights adopts a resolution asking the Secretary General to examine requests for assistance in assessing past violations of Cambodian and international law.
1998
Pol Pot dies in his jungle hideout. Senior Khmer Rouge leaders defect. Civil war gradually ends, with remaining leaders surrendering the following year.
2001
Cambodian law is passed seeking establishment of a tribunal to bring genocide charges against Khmer Rouge leaders.
2005
Khmer Rouge tribunal is approved by the United Nations after years of debate over funding.
2007
The tribunal is operational and begins questioning surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders.
2010
Top former Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, and Khieu Samphan are indicted for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Acknowledgments
Since early childhood I have been drawn to the plaintive sounds of the traditional Khmer ensemble, and it would be impossible to thank individually the scores of unrecognized musicians who have shared with me not only their music but also their stories. Each is a story of suffering and sacrifice. These nameless musicians I encounter on street corners and forest trails, so often overlooked, continue to move me. I feel their music in my heart, and wish to honor their efforts to sustain their art and, in so doing, to sustain us all.
I offer my profoundest gratitude to my mother, who, through a lifetime of conversations, has been my abiding partner in a journey across time and continents. I am indebted to my stepfather for sharing his war experiences as a Lon Nol government soldier who, like so many of that time, brought his young family to the battlefields, convinced that it was the safest of many risky choices.
My thanks also to Hin Yuthika, Kim McDevitt, and His Excellency Oum Maknorith for the glimpses they shared of the Phnom Penh social milieu of the 1960s; Om Chhem and his fellow village elders along the shores of the Tonle Sap Lake; the demining professional and former soldier Nhiem Khon; the archaeologist Chea Socheat; the builders and artisans Kann Mony Rath, Khorn Bora, Yich Yanyan, and Touch Det; and Nen Ekneka, Prach Mara, Mak Sophea, and Chey Savry, for their insights into the struggles of contemporary youth.
I would also like to acknowledge the numerous, meticulous analyses of the Khmer Rouge period published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, as well as historical studies by David Chandler, Philip Short, and Ben Kiernan, which have proved indispensable in confirming key events. Reyum Publishing has provided an invaluable service in publishing Khmer language works on traditional music and ritual, including illustrated volumes by Keo Narom and Ang Choulean.
I am deeply indebted to my agent, Emma Sweeney, for her steadfast support and wise counsel; and to my editor, Trish Todd, for her astute eye and insightful probing. My journey as an author has been all the more rewarding because of these two guardian angels at my side. I offer my heartfelt thanks also to Susan Moldow and her amazing team at Touchstone—David Falk, Tara Parsons, Brian Belfiglio, Jessica Roth, Meredith Vilarello, Kaitlin Olson, Kelsey Manning, and Cherlynne Li—for shepherding this story into the world; and to Wendy Sheanin and those at Simon & Schuster for their sustained faith and enthusiasm.
My boundless gratitude to my larger family for their generous love and support always—in
particular, my beautiful sisters, Leakhena and Lynda; my fellow artist and musical inspiration, Patrick; my superhero Joann; my lovely sister-in-law, Juliana, and the kindhearted Ann-Mari and Mitchell.
To my husband, Blake, I offer my heart and soul. To our daughter, Annelise, I give my unconditional, limitless love. I am inexpressibly grateful for their love in return.
Touchstone Reading Group Guide
Music of the Ghosts
This reading group guide for Music of the Ghosts includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Vaddey Ratner. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
As Music of the Ghosts opens, Teera’s beloved aunt Amara, the only link to her traumatic childhood escape from the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge genocide, has just passed away. Now, she must return to her homeland to rediscover a family legacy.
At age thirty-seven, Teera is in many ways a stranger to this new Cambodia and the stories it holds. In addition to fulfilling her promise to return her aunt’s ashes to Phnom Penh, she has been called by a letter from a half-blind man, the Old Musician, who is searching for a peace he can’t find in the temple compound where he earns his keep by playing for ceremonies and funerals. Still, the Old Musician and the young woman are bound by history, and the story of the three instruments that are her birthright.
In this lyrical and poignant novel (the follow-up to the author’s bestselling In the Shadow of the Banyan), the heartbreak of the Old Musician’s past intertwines with Teera’s own voyage of self-discovery, as questions of past trauma, present justice, and the legacy of love change both of them forever.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Teera feels sure that Amara has had to live with a “divided self” since fleeing her homeland and coming to live in Minnesota. In what ways does Teera, herself, live with an incomplete sense of her identity?
2. When she first visits Wat Nagara, Teera panics, feeling sorrowful and isolated. “She wanted to be alone with the ghosts, to seek communion with her loved ones. Instead she came face to face with her aloneness, saw it reflected wholly, indelibly, in the engraved invocation.” Compare these two kinds of solitude. Why is one so much more painful for her than the other?
3. Among the many parallels between the musicians’ lives, both Sokhon and Tun abandon their young daughters on the eve of war. Review each father’s reasons for doing so. Is this abandonment more cruel or more kind?
4. Compare the ways in which the novel’s three main female characters, Channara, Amara, and Suteera, deal with the trauma of the Cambodian genocide. What are the “breaking points” for their grief? Would you characterize some of the women as stronger than others?
5. How does Mr. Chum become a father figure for Teera during her visit to Cambodia? Describe the many ways the novel invokes the meaning of family, disrupted and recreated.
6. “The hues of one love simmer in another.” There are many layered relationships in the novel, in which certain figures become stand-ins or foils for another. Choose a few pairings to discuss. Some ideas include: Channara/Teera, Sokhon/Tun, Teera/Sita, Teera/Lah, and Narunn/The Old Musician.
7. Several times in the novel, Teera’s first encounters are infused with questions from the past, as in her descriptions of meeting the Old Musician and Dr. Narunn. How does the author’s writing convey this interplay of perception, hope, and memory? What does it reveal about the characters?
8. Much of the novel explores how we adapt to and survive in the face of inhumanity. Still, it doesn’t sugarcoat the lasting effects of fear, desperation, and ruthlessness on its characters’ psyches. Would you say that Music of the Ghosts has an optimistic message?
9. “Foreigners have often said ours is a ‘culture of impunity.’ An English phrase, as you know. . . . What does it really mean?” Discuss the abbot’s question. Judging by Ratner’s description in the book, would you describe the Cambodian culture as such?
10. One of Music of the Ghosts’ most resonant themes is that of justice: what it entails, and what its limits are. What is your definition of justice? Is there a difference between justice and retribution, as the Old Musician suggests?
11. Consider the modern children in the book: the young monks, Lah, and Makara, the young addict-turned-novice. How are they affected by the legacy of the war and genocide?
12. The Old Musician feels responsible for Sokhon’s fate, and a single question has tormented him for decades. Was he right to do what he did in Slak Daek? What would you have done in the same situation? The question is a good one for debate.
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Read an English translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Guerre, which makes such a strong impression on Tun as a student at Chomroeun Vichea high school. What light does it shed on the character of the young Tun, or the Old Musician he becomes?
2. Sense memories of Cambodia as it was before the Khmer Rouge are incredibly important to all of the book’s characters. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a town or city with a Cambodian restaurant, consider having them cater your book club with Khmer delicacies. If the closest Cambodian eatery is too far away, try your hand at some simple snacks with easy-to-find ingredients, like this classic iced coffee drink ( cambokitchen.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/cambodian-coffee/) or a banana rice pudding ( karenskitchen1.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/going-bananas-for-rice-pudding/). To listen to the sounds of the traditional Khmer instruments described in the novel, including the ksae diev (lute) and sralai (oboe), a good beginning is The Music of Cambodia: Solo Instrumental Music, available for ordering at www.harmonies.com/releases/13076.htm/. You can also listen to the Khmer rock ballad that Narunn and Teera sing to each other, “Allo Oun, Allo Bong” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=HizwnxE9hpY/.
3. In the Shadow of the Banyan, Vaddey Ratner’s first novel, is based on the author’s own childhood experiences surviving the Khmer Rouge regime. Visit her website at www.vaddeyratner.com/ to watch her describe her effort to transform tragedy into art (the video in under Books > In the Shadow of the Banyan), listen to and read her interviews with NPR and others (under Press > Interviews), or read her short essays on storytelling, imagination, and human rights (under Press > Vaddey’s Writing).
4. View the collection of short videos providing vignettes of contemporary life in Phnom Penh at http://whitebuilding.org/en/media/films. Select one to share with your book group, and explain why you chose it.
A Conversation With Vaddey Ratner
Your first novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, also dealt with the Cambodian genocide. Why did you decide to return to this topic for your second book? What aspects of the tragedy were you able to highlight here that you weren’t able to earlier?
An experience like this marks you forever. It defines not just your own history but that of your entire family, even the next generation. You can never stop asking questions about what happened and why. With Banyan, my paramount purpose in writing was to honor the lives lost, to honor the courage and love that made my own survival possible.
Music of the Ghosts is about the survivors—people like myself who were victims, as well as those who may have had a hand in the destruction. I truly believe that I would not be alive today without the humanity of others. I wanted to explore that humanity from all sides. The only way I know to do that is to put aside my own personal pain, my own loss, and turn the light on what the experiences of others might have been.
In examining atrocities around the world, there’s often an intense focus on an individual dictator, like Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. It’s easy to look at these men and say, they’re an aberration, they’re not like the rest of us—unique in their appetite for power, their readiness to use violence toward that end. Yet a single person cannot will such an atrocity. I’m interested in t
he lives of those caught in the same events who end up on the wrong side. What choices did they make? What motivates people to support a cause that becomes so murderous?
On a personal level, to this day I’ve never learned what happened to my own father after he disappeared in the early days after the Khmer Rouge takeover. I’ve never learned how his life ended. So I feel a duty to understand the suffering of others in its fullest extent, including the suffering of those who didn’t make it.
In the novel, Teera asks the question, Why does such suffering recur again and again? Like her, I feel we have yet to honor the dead with an answer. We cannot hope to understand, we cannot hope to change, if we are not willing to see suffering in others that is equal to or greater than our own.
In the Shadow of the Banyan was both a critical and a commercial hit, receiving not only major prize and “best of” nominations, but also appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. What was your reaction to this sudden success? Did it affect your approach to writing your sophomore novel?
I was stunned into stillness. After absorbing that, the overwhelming feeling was just gratitude. It reaffirmed what I believed all along—that the world still cares, that we haven’t been forgotten. The world can be a noisy place, with so many voices competing to be heard. Sometimes you can’t raise your voice to be heard, but instead you must speak in a voice that is so quiet that people have to silence themselves to hear you. That’s the approach I took with Banyan—to write quietly, to write with the belief that if I have something important to say, the world will listen.
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